


Ars Moriendi

by Weirdling_Joi



Series: Bringing Castiel Back One AU at a Time [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Castiel (Supernatural)-centric, Castiel-centric, Character Death, Character Death Fix, Episode Related, Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Episode: s13e01 Lost and Found, Season 13 AU, Season/Series 13, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-17 12:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12365574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weirdling_Joi/pseuds/Weirdling_Joi
Summary: Cas comes back (from Season 12/Season 13 events), but what does he come back to and how long can it last?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This one is the third in the series of "never gonna happen" stories of Cas coming back. But this one is darker. It borrows some ideas from Failsafe, cannibalizing an idea that may still happen if I continue that series. I don't know how long this story will be.

On the first day of the reign of Jack, he hunted down and killed all the demons.

On the second day, he decimated the ranks of the rest of the monsters.

On the third, fourth, and fifth days, he razed purgatory, heaven, and hell.

On the sixth, the hunters, the remaining monsters, and the angels stood against him, and were annihilated. Only Sam and Dean were spared. 

On the seventh, he brought back Cas, but not in the way he had desired.

While the one he loved lay dead in the center of the table, Jack was sharing his intentions with the final threats holed up in the bunker. Dean and Sam and their helper, that bitch who had replaced her soul with spells stolen from his father’s kind. Oh, Jack had plans for Lily Sunder.

“Do any of these plans,” Dean snarked from his kneeling place before him, “involve less gloating and more action?”

To his right and left, his companions glared at him.

Dean shrugged. “I’m just saying, you’ve done enough of that on TV, the radio, Twitter even to last a lifetime. Hell, I’m surprised you don’t have another captive cameraman or live blogger filming your reign of terror.”

“Bearing witness to my redemption of this world, you mean.” The teenager stopped pacing and moved closer to Dean. “On the seventh day, the Lord rested.” He shrugged and backed up to the shrouded figure he had brought with him. That had whipped Dean into a frenzy until he had gripped them tight with power and put them in their place on the floor. “I intend to use this time as . . . what do you humans call it? A busman’s holiday?” He clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms. “A lot of work to catch upon. No rest for the righteous. Anyway . . . ” 

He rested his hand on the head of the shrouded figure, never letting go of Dean’s gaze, but Dean was having a hard time looking now. He recognized the bindings on the covered corpse. He recognized his own handiwork. It didn’t get easier with the second time around.

“Cat got your tongue, Dean? Nothing to say?” Jack smirked. “I’ll give you something to say in a moment.” He turned to the canisters and boxes and bags he had brought with him, arranged along one side of the table nearest himself.

Sam leaned past Dean, surprised he could move that much against the invisible pressure keeping them in place. He whispered at their unexpected guest, “Got anything yet?”

Before Lily could respond beyond a flinty stare, the nephilim laughed. “I can hear you, you know. And no, Sam, she doesn’t, though she’s trying.” He tapped his skull. “You’re still blocking me from most of your thoughts, but that won’t matter for long. Not once I am done. You won’t have a thought left in your traitorous head.”

“How am I a traitor? You killed the angels as well.”

“You wanted to kill Father.” He ripped off the shroud, as if the bindings weren’t there. It rippled in the air before drifting and settling to the floor. “You will die for that. In time.” He turned to the large wooden bowl made of some extinct wood and set it near the crown of Cas’s head.

To Sam’s eyes, Castiel was perfectly preserved, looking the same as on the day he had died. He looked at peace, but how could he be? Cas was nowhere, nothing; he wasn’t coming back from that.

Dean was just silently gagging on the smell of burnt feathers that still clung to the body.

Lily just asked a question, “How did you bring his body back? They gave him a hunter’s funeral. You were there.” She shrugged when Dean and Sam looked at her. “I kept track.” 

Jack never looked up as he poured the blackened blood of grace-burnt demons into the bowl, swirling it around like pouring chocolate syrup on ice cream. “It was never burned. It was an illusion. He was—is—mine, but I needed time. And a spell.” He wiggled the container, shaking out the last few drops. “And the right ingredients.” He smirked, tossed the container over his shoulder, and licked a stray droplet off his finger. “Mmm, got them.” 

Powdered bone of a dozen types of monster was sprinkled on top of three open glasses. They glowed red, black, and blue-white—the “manifested spirit of the three afterlifes: hell, purgatory, and heaven,” Lily informed Dean and Sam. The glasses flared up, moving less like flame, and more like shadows, before being dumped into the bowl. They lost their separateness then, turning into violet light bubbling with black. Before he could uncork a vial of black-veined, blue-white light, she nodded. “An archangel’s grace, or it was before you polluted it holy oil and the dust of angel blades. You are making a resurrection spell. To bring someone back from the Empty.”

Sam looked at her. But it was Dean who growled out at Jack, “I thought you couldn’t bring him back.” But his voice didn’t have much force, much anger. Hope was clouding it. 

“Someone who understands what I am doing.” He poured the grace in. It fought, and he had to press it down with his hand. “The only one.”

“You also killed all the angels,” Sam said. “Even Michael. How does that help revive Cas?”

“It didn’t. All I needed was Michael.” The empty vial shattered on the floor after he tossed it aside too. “But it helps me. It helps Paradise.” He made a circling gesture with his finger, and the contents of the bowl stirred. The transfigured grace of an archangel shuddered through the violet haze before the light crawled back below the rim, where the captive audience couldn’t see it anymore. “I didn’t need to kill all he demons or any of the hunters, for that matter, but I did. Because it was necessary.” The nephilim shrugged. “And fun. Bonus.”

The first sign the spell was not a dud was the puff of smoke. Black. Then more poured out, deep black with traces of blue like lightning racing through it. Above it, clinging the ceiling, a matching swirl puffed into existence. It grew, spiraling, spiraling, spiraling down like a tornado trapped in a glass.

Watching it with a smirk, Jack dipped his hand in the bowl, cupping what looked like malleable smoke. He anointed Cas’s forehead with an Enochian sigil and paired it with a chant. A contorted wisp lifted from the pale skin and hovered.

“Fill his dimensions,” Lily translated.

Then as he traced another symbol over the bloody hole in his shirt.

“Fill his grace.”

He leant over the table and dragged eight dripping fingers over the arms down the sides to the shoes with dirt and grass still clinging to them. 

“Fill his wings.”

He dotted each eyelid and lips. 

“That’s his own alteration. ‘Serve at my side, beloved Father, and together we will rule my Paradise.’” 

The smoke above their heads had not been a passive spectator. With each sigil and chant, it had expanded, rumbling, licking the air with ionized scents and heat. With each sigil and chant, it had grown more and more light than dark, until it was no longer smoke but atomized sparks of blue-white light. Grace, or dimensions, or whatever, Dean assumed, staring at it, hoping. Wanting. Needing so many things that were bound up in a single name. “Cas,” he whispered.

“Oh, he’s not going to save you this time, Dean. He’s never going to kneel at your feet and beg for scraps of affection. He’s not your pet anymore. He’s my father, and before the day is done, I will have him destroy you and your brother for all the sins you committed against him. Slowly. One flake of skin, one scream at a time. But first . . . “ The nephilim unwrapped a bit of black velvet and took up the angel blade. 

The angel blade that had killed Cas.

It still bore the scratches where Dean had tried to destroy it and failed.

Jack drew his finger along its length, a frown flicking over his face. “I hated it, too.” Then he shook his head and thrust it to the funnel of glowing turbulence descending above the bowl. At first, the light carried on, as if nothing had changed. But soon its patterns of moment changed. The funnel bent and began circle the tip. Questing, shying away, but drawing ever nearer and nearer like a mouse salivating over the cheese on a trap. If it had whiskers, they would be twitching. 

“Thank you for holding onto it for me, Dean. I couldn’t do this without it.” 

Without warning, the blue-white swirl sprang upon the blade, seizing it, nearly ripping it from Jack’s hands. He laughed. “Powerful.” He pulled back, as if reeling it in. “More powerful than I expected. I’ve done better than I thought. See? The more ingredients, the better.” 

Lily smirked and shook her head. “You sound like an angel. Always so full of yourselves.”

“You’ll be full of something else in a moment.”

“That blade, I presume.”

“Hmm, not yet.”

During the argument, the sparks had been moving into the silvery blade, lighting it up like a fireflies trapped in a mason jar. But soon it was too full; soon all it was, was a pulsing light. It thrummed in the air, low, annoying. More so to Lily. She winced, shoulders bunching, but she couldn’t reach to cover her ears. Neither did Jack who looked similarly affected. 

Through tight lips, he gritted something out. 

Despite her discomfort, Lily translated Jack’s last words. 

“So be it. Come home, Father.”

And then Jack stabbed Cas in the chest, right in the through the old, gaping wound. 

“No!” Dean screamed.

In a silent explosion, the light shot through every inch of flesh and jerked the body, snapping open the eyes, thumping the limbs against the table, seizing the body. Cas rose, rose up for a moment, sitting up, as if he were going to get up, step off the table, walk back into their lives. Then the light shrank back, back, back, rushing to the now translucent blade. Before it could, Jack ripped it out. The body slammed back onto the table, eyes closed again, still again. The wound was gone.

Jack smiled, waiting.

The others held their breath, some fearing, some wanting, some hopeful. 

For a moment, nothing happened. 

For a longer moment, nothing happened. 

Dean slumped onto his heels, closing his eyes, knowing. That was it then. Cas wasn’t coming back. Cas was never coming back. They had run out of miracles.

After an even longer moment, Jack caught on and slammed his fist down, cracking the table. Cas’s body slid to a heap on the floor. The blade went sailing through the air and shattered against the wall, raining down like glass, though it thudded like heartbeats. “No! No! NO! I did the spell right. It was perfect.” He gripped his head in his hands. “Perfect!”

“But you weren’t an angel. That spell wasn’t meant for you.”

With a snarl on his face, he rounded the table and marched toward her. “I have grace. That’s all that it requires.”

Lily shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. You are new to Enochian. You missed things. Perhaps,” she whispered as he leaned in, his eyes blazing yellow, “you shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to kill all the angels.”

He seized her throat. 

Dean and Sam yelled at him, struggling, making threats they couldn’t follow through on. Without looking away from the rush of blood and bulge of her good eye, Jack reached out his other hand, extended the fingers, before squeezed them into a fist. The brothers’ voices cut off.

So did their lungs.

“That means I have no more need of you, any of you. Time to say goodbye.”

Blackness danced around the edges of their visions, growing like the smoke before, faster and faster. 

So much so they couldn’t see what was happening. They didn’t see the hand that seized the outstretched fist. The touch that distracted the nephilim. That presence that made him lose his train of thought, thus stopping the flow of power. 

When they could breathe and blink away unconsciousness, they too stared in awe.

Before them stood Cas, swaying in place, pale. His hand was tight on Jack’s outstretched arm. He was half turned and staring at Jack.

Sam didn’t like the look of his eyes, literally. The blue was lined with a silver color, not unlike the yellow of Jack’s.

Dean didn’t care. He was back. He was back. He was back.

Lily, in the privacy of her secret thoughts, was the only one who knew what that meant, and she smiled broadly. 

Jack was smiling too after he recovered. And crying. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he hugged the unsteady angel. “Father, you answered me.”

Although the embrace had broken his Cas’s grip, Cas did not otherwise move.

“Father.”

Still swaying in place, Cas cocked his head. A distant look played across his features, as if he and his body were not yet on speaking terms. But that was fading as the color seeped back into his face bit by bit.

“Father?” The teen scrubbed his cheek. “Say something. Did I—did I mess up the spell?”

With a whole body shudder, Cas stopped swaying and focused. Really focused. He spoke, voice rough, abused-sounding, in Enochian.

The teen frowned. “I don’t understand.”

After a moment, Cas repeated himself, more firmly, more slowly. The words flowed off his tongue . . . with grace, ironically, Dean thought. When Cas was done, he slowly touched his chest, over the wound, the closed wound. His fingertips remained pressed there, but Cas’s gaze never left Jack. Dean had to look away, heart thudding, head pounding. 

“You want to know why you aren’t in heaven? In the Empty?” Jack didn’t sound sure. “I saved you.”

Lily laughed, brokenly. She croaked out, “You only studied enough Enochian for the spell.”

Cas spoke the words again. 

“I don’t understand you. You need to speak English, Father.”

Cas, however, it seemed, only spoke Enochian. Reset way beyond the factory settings. Dean had had enough. He turned back and in voice broken for more reasons than damaged lungs, he said simply, “Cas.”

No one spoke or moved. Then at last Cas jerked and turned his head and looked at Dean. Blankness rested behind his gaze. Until he looked at Dean’s left upper arm. A furrow knitted his brow.

He said something. To Dean this time.

“He says he recognizes his mark on you.”

“Shut up.” Jack’s eyes blazed and he flung out a fist, collapsing their vocal cords. “All of you. But you.” He jabbed a finger and released Lily. “Translate.”

“Translate what?”

“What he said.” 

Cas slowly refocused on Jack. The furrow had not lifted from his brow.

“He asked why you killed all his brothers.”

Jack licked his lips. “Translate truthfully, or I will rip out your throat and make you write out what he says with your own blood.”

She grimaced but nodded. “He asked why the heavens ache with silence. He asked why all his brothers are no more.”

Jack licked his lips again and scrubbed his cheek again. “Tell him they were threats. That they had to go because they stood in the way of Paradise. They would have stopped me from saving him. Tell him I saved him. Me. That I’m his son. Tell him.”

She sighed and spoke. 

Cas never looked at her. He only had eyes for Jack. No matter how much Dean and Sam prayed and thought at him.

Once she was done, that changed. Cas did look at her then. He spoke to her. 

She responded back. 

“What are you saying? Tell me what you are saying! I didn’t tell you to respond. You’re betraying me.” He snarled. “Say goodbye to your throat.” 

He raised his hand.

Lily gurgled and began to cough up blood.

His arm was seized again before anything more solid came out. She sagged in place, coughing. 

Jack trembled beneath the grip. “Father?”

Cas said something.

“You, abomination!” Jack snapped his fingers at Lily. “Do your job.”

Between coughs, she managed, “You killed the angels.”

“That’s what he said? Why is he so hung up on that?” Jack tried to march over to her, but he was not let go. So he subsided. “Did you tell him it was necessary? They had tried to kill him before. I’m protecting him. I’m protecting our dream. Our Paradise. Tell him!”

Before she could, Cas repeated himself again, harsher this time.

“Abomination,” Jack hissed. “Translate me.”

She smirked. “Funny,” she scraped out. “That’s what he called you. And it wasn’t a question. It was a statement.”

She added one last word, one they all recognized, as “Yes.”

“Damn you.” Jack’s eyes blazed. “I don’t think I need you at all.” He jerked free from Cas’s grip and raised his hand, fingers poised to snap, to splatter her across the bunker walls. 

This time, it wasn’t Cas who stopped him. Not directly. Pressure bloomed around them; it rolled over them like a ton of water, pressing them down, down, down. It was hard to breathe. Even their hearts pumped sluggishly. Their thoughts struggled to form. Their world grew dim. But not so dim they couldn’t see Cas’s eyes grow entirely silver. Not so dim they couldn’t see whole, massive wings unfurl in a thunder clap. Jack stepped away. Cas followed, backing him into a wall stippled with the shadows of his feathers.

“Please, Father, don’t. Don’t make me hurt you. Don’t.”

Cas raised an arm. He reached for Jack’s cheek. 

“Please.”

The pressure, the rumbles, the rustling wings grew in intensity. So with a sob, Jack raised his hands, splaying his fingers, and blasted light at Cas.

Cas didn’t even stagger back. He repeated the word Lily translated as “Abomination.” And crowded Jack with pressure and thousands of twitching feathers and filled his skull with silver light. 

It shuttered the yellow blaze in his eyes.

Light and smoke streamed out his mouth and nose and tear ducts. 

His screams went beyond human pitch, to unearthly, to the kind that had tried to rip out Dean’s eardrums the first time Dean had been resurrected by Cas.

The rest of the attack was carried out in a mixture of ringing and muted tones, as if they were underwater. Their eardrums had burst They had enough sense to clench shut their eyes, but even so silver light cracked across it like fireworks. The whole room shuddered, sending them to the ground.

Then it was over.

When they opened their eyes, between the blind spots, they saw ash trickling between Cas’s fingers to the floor and smoke fading into the air. They began to pull themselves upright, but before they could go far, the pressure, the gaze, the power was turned on them. Flattening them in place. Crushing. Cas stalked slowly back to their row and stopped before them. His lips moved.

Lily’s moved back as she said, or the boys hoped she said, “I can’t hear you.”

Cas just stared at them and stared. Stared. Then lifted a hand and several rows of staggered feathers. Or shadows that looked like feathers. 

Cool, Dean couldn’t help but think. Cool.

Cas cocked his head at him , and then their ears and eyes were back, their lungs and throats were whole, and they could stand. Dean took advantage of that immediately, and before Sam could do more than shout his name, he grabbed Cas’s face in his trembling hands—not that he’d ever later admit to that tremble or the one in his voice as he whispered, “Cas.” He poured everything into his touch, into that name.

Something in the pressure faded. Rumbles took on a more distant quality, as if the storm were passing. The feathers dancing behind and above and everywhere softened. 

And Dean did something else Lily and his brother vocally disagreed with. He reached out and brushed the feathers before they disappeared forever. They were like nothing he had felt before. They weren’t soft like bird feathers. They didn’t feel like feathers at all. They felt like light; they brushed his skin like sunlight and tingled on this tongue though they were nowhere near his mouth. 

The wings twitched, becoming . . . fewer. Dean couldn’t help but tighten his grip and whisper, “Awesome.” 

Then fingers and feathers both lifted and hovered around Dean’s left arm. But they didn’t touch. Instead, he stared at what he was interested in, but something kept him back from making contact. Instead, he asked something in Enochian again. Many of the words sounded familiar to what had gone on before.

Enough so that Dean stopped staring at the play of feathers, winking in and out of existence like stars playing tag with a moving cloud. Dean swallowed hard.

“Is he asking what I think he is asking?”

Lily spoke from behind him. “He is asking if we assisted in his brothers’ demise.”

“No.” Dean shook his head and repeated himself in Enochian. “No.” Then back to English. “That was all Satan’s lovechild, not us.”

Lily presumably translated truthfully. For they three didn’t go up in a blaze of holy smoke; instead Cas regarded them one by one. When his gaze returned to Dean, the power faded and the feathers flicked out of existence, like a rolling ocean wave. Except the patch Dean gripped. Those danced in the air around his fist, detached, alone. 

Cas looked to the ceiling, something in his face crumpling, and then with a broken cry, he was crumpling too. Dean shouted in alarm and caught him, calling his name over and over, but Cas had closed his eyes, was crying, crying silver tears, and Dean was trying to stop their flow with his hands as if they were life blood gushing out. He cupped Cas’s face again.

“Help me,” he said. 

When no one moved, he shot over his shoulder. “Sam, help me, dammit.” 

His brother knelt beside him but didn’t do anything more than grab a trench-coat covered arm. “Help how? What is wrong with him?”

“Despair.”

They both looked at Lily at that. 

“What?”

“What did he say before he collapsed?” Sam asked. “Maybe it can help.”

Lily Sunder smiled, but it wasn’t a pleased smile. Just a crooked one. “’So I am alone.’” She shook her head and walked away toward the stairs and door. “You can’t heal heartbreak, Dean. Trust me, I’ve tried.” 

Sam shouted her name, and with a last, frantic look at Dean and Cas, he squeezed Cas’s shoulder and took off after her. 

Dean did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled Cas into a hug and cradled the back of his head. “You are not alone. You have us. You’re home.” And he prayed that was something Cas needed no translation to hear.

Maybe Cas did understand. Maybe he didn’t. Either way, Cas reacted to Dean’s presence at last. He lowered his head and rested it on Dean’s shoulder, staining it with silver tears.


	2. Chapter 2

After the last week, Sam’s patience was running thin. So when he caught up with Lily Sunder outside, he barely stopped short of grabbing her arm and spinning her around. Instead he got in her face. “What the hell is going on here? What did Jack want with you, Lily? You weren’t needed for the spell.”

She smirked and looked him up and down with her good eye. The other, unearthly white, seemed more intense than before. “What do you think?”

It wasn’t just his patience running thin, but his confidence. He was the one who had convinced Dean that Jack was good, to give him a try. And they had for three months, and look where that had got them. A world hurting worse than it ever had before.

Because of them.

Because of Jack.

And even the wins were failures.

On a better day, he would have hidden this beneath a bluff.

He had run out of good days.

And Lily knew that.

Lily knew a lot of things.

Some of which involved Cas.

The need to return to the bunker, and all those unanswered questions waiting inside, itched at him. But he had to come back with something. Anything.

So he stared down the century-old woman in dirty, torn, bloody pant suit and tried to conjure up some sympathy, a new, old way in. “Is your soul really gone?”

Her lips quirked a bit as she saw through him. “Not entirely.”

“Is that why he wanted you? Because you soul . . . was different?”

She didn’t respond this time. Instead, she pulled out from her coat’s pocket a notebook like the kind police carried. She flipped it open with a snap of her wrist. Enochian littered most of the pages she flipped through. The handwriting was crisp, precise, but the pen had pressed so hard at times it ripped through some of the pages.

“I would like to say I would miss having these conversations with you. A part of me misses a scholar, and your brother, well, let’s say his skills lie elsewhere.” She licked her fingers, grimaced at the blood on them still, her own blood, and wiped it off on her pants and tried again. She ripped out a page and handed it to him. “This will help you find a place to start.”

Sam looked at it. “I don’t even know where to start. We need you to translate until . . . until Cas is better.”

“Oh, Samuel, he’s not going to get better. But as I said, you are the scholar. So do your job: research.” She put her notebook away and started past him. “Oh, and I’d hurry if I were you.” She tapped a finger beneath her milky eye. “I don’t think he has long.”

Sam crumpled the paper in his fist and grabbed her arm. “Enough of the games. We need your help; you’re going to help him by telling us everything you know. You owe him. He saved you.”

“That page releases my debt. He’s your angel, not mine. I’ve washed my hands of your problems, and you.” She snapped her fingers, and light ignited in her hand, making Sam step back instinctively, shielding his eyes. Her voice took on an echoing sound, as if she were talking from across a large room. “Don’t look me up. You’ll never find me.” She ran her palm down before her, and Sam lunged, but all he caught was a shock to the system that knocked him on his ass. He sat there, blinking at the spots where she once stood. 

“Dammit!” He rose and kicked at the ground he could barely see. But he was alone, with no answers, no help. 

But so was his brother. In a far more dangerous situation.

Sam closed his stinging eyes and willed his vision to clear so he could make it inside without falling down the stairs and breaking his neck. After all, there was no guarantee Cas would bring him back this time.

There was no guarantee about Cas staying alive at all, apparently. Something best kept from Dean until Sam had a chance to . . . he squeezed his hand, feeling the crisp edges of the paper . . . until he knew more. 

So he stood with his head tilted backing, muttering “Come on, come on,” to himself, not really knowing who he was speaking to, just that at some point it had turned into a prayer.

A prayer that only one person was left to hear.

Not that he could understand. He didn’t seem to be speaking English anymore. 

“Come on.”

When the itch got too strong, he hurried inside, to see something between the shifting black splotches that made his heart stop.

Cas had his palm on Dean’s skull, and Dean was gripping that hand tight, fighting the smiting position.

“Dean! No!”


	3. Chapter 3

Even strange, silver angel tears dried up eventually. Not before they made his arm go all funky--like he had slept on it--for a week. Maybe Cas sensed something of that for he stirred, lifting his head, reaching for Dean’s numb, left upper arm.

Reaching for something that hadn’t been there for years.

He wasn’t dumb. When not sucker punched by blind panic, he could string a clue or two together with the best of them. But apparently, just because Dean couldn’t see it apparently just because Dean couldn’t see it, didn’t mean it wasn’t still there. Hidden from his sight. Like awesome touch-and-feel shadows that were no longer there. 

Dean’s gaze shifted from where wings once filled the room to Cas’s intense concentration on his arm, to the hand hovering so close he could feel the heat of his skin, or maybe that was just Cas, for the rest of his arm was still numb. 

But while Dean could rub two clues together as well as the rest of them, he didn’t often have the patience to do more than that. 

He cleared his throat. “If it’ll help, if you need to touch the, uhm . . . ” He rolled his shoulder a little more elegantly than his tongue did with the verbal permission. “Go ahead.”

Instead Cas flinched back. He rose and moved away from Dean.

“Or not.” Dean looked down at his hands, then scrubbed them on his jeans. He didn’t know what he had done to scare off Cas. He didn’t know this Cas, and he had dealt with many of them in the past. The pure angel, all duty and impatience with human quirks. The one who rebelled and fell for him, something he still had a hard time believing even today. The secretive one who buddied up with a demon rather than ask for help. The crazed god, not his favorite. The amnesiac who just wanted to help. 

That had run true throughout all those Shyamalan worthy splits: the desire to help. Even though Bee-Herder Cas had been deathly afraid of helping, because Dean had taken out all his shit on him, making him think it meant all he did was make things worse when he did so. Transference much, Dean? And, yes, Sam, he knew what that meant. 

Now this. 

Dean looked at Cas looking at him, like a bird sprung from its cage and not knowing which way to flee. This Cas . . . this one hurt. Just like Emmanuel, out of all of them, had hurt the worst. Because at least the others knew him, and he could work with that. But this Cas? 

He didn’t even have that. All he had was the fact Cas had recognized a mark on him, or he would have flown the coop by now, and there would have been no getting him back. 

No.

No. He had to come back, because this was it. No more chances, no more miracles after this. Because the devil boy had wiped them out too. There was only them, Team Free Will, and this time he’d make sure nothing broke them up again.

Dean rubbed his sweaty hands on his hands on his pants again and stood up, trying to hide his nerves. “Cas, we need to talk.” 

He approached his best friend, his honorary brother.

Who stiffened. Dean imagined the wings, the healed wings hiking up, ready to take flight.

Dean slowed his roll, softened his voice, kept his movements slow, but his eyes glued to Cas’s.

“It’s all right. It’s just a talk. Everything will be all right in a moment.” 

Without breaking eye contact, he reached out. Slowly. Took up Cas’s hand. Slowly. And he placed it on his own skull. “Go on, do your thing.”

Cas stared at him, head cocked, tension slowly seeping out of him. 

The door squealed open, and Sam shouted, “Dean! No!” And half stumbled, half fell down the stairs. 

Dean released Cas and went to his side. “What the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t Cas heal you?”

Sam’s fists lifted to rub his red eyes. “I—I thought.” He shook his head and dropped his hands, still panting. “Lily and her magic disappearing act.”

Dean grimaced. “Yeah, I remember. Fun times. You good to stand?”

Sam nodded, and once Dean was sure, he went back to Cas and replaced his hand on his head. 

“Go on, do your thing. Download English or whatever; we need to talk.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple, Dean.”

“Sure it is. He walked in our heads all the time. Come on, Cas. You won’t get another open invite.” He squeezed Cas’s wrist. “Just do it.” 

After a beat or two, Cas crinkled his brow at him.

After a few more beats, he grabbed Dean’s other hand, lifted it, and put it on his own head, holding it in place. Just like Dean was doing to him.

Sam just laughed, weakly. “I don’t think he gets it.”

“God!” Dean stepped away and thunked his forehead with his palm. “Dammit. We need Lily then. To translate. Where the hell would she go?” Did he look forward to getting back out in the world that had their faces, and Baby’s bad side, plastered across every screen? Hell, no. But what other option did they have? They needed help.

“She says she’s done with us. I don’t think we’re going to find her.” Sam pulled out a wrinkled note and passed it over to him. “But she gave me this.”

Dean flipped it one way, then the other. Still looked worthless. “What the hell are we supposed to do this?” 

“Research. What’s wrong with your arm?”

Dean hadn’t even realized he had been rubbing it while he had been playing with the page. He shrugged. “Silver tears, angel Novocain. It’s fine. It’s coming back.” 

And it came back a lot faster when Cas snuck up behind him, rested his hand on the back of his neck, and wicked it all away to never-never-land.

Dean rotated his arm. Then clapped Cas on the back. “Thank you.”

After a moment, Cas clapped him on the back too. A little too hard, sending him staggering into Sam. Nearly sending them both to the floor. 

He recovered and met Cas’s eyes, his strange, silver ringed eyes, back to being mostly blue. Apparently, his blue screen of death had killed more than language abilities. The way he stared at him, he doubted Cas even knew what the hell he was, what species. An angel equivalent of a sad face and up yours from Microsoft.

Whatever. Fine. They’d deal with that later. 

He handed the note back to Sam. “Time to hit the books?”

Sam nodded. 

“You’re eyes good enough to do that?”

Sam blinked, then said, “They will be.”

Dean sighed and gestured at Cas. Then his eyes. “Can you do something about that?” 

After a moment, Cas gestured at his own eyes. Of course.

With a sigh, Dean marched over to Sam, who was protesting, “It’s all right, Dean.” 

Dean muttered, “Always the chick flick moment.” And he touched Sam’s face. Then his own eyes again. Then the back of his neck. “Cas, can you lay on the healing touch again?”

Anything could have been a response from an echo of wriggling fingers. To a three-part chick flick moment.

Yet what came out was a burst of Enochian and him moving in close to and touching Sam’s forehead with two fingers. A gesture so familiar it hurt. The air rang like running a wet finger over a glass of water, and then Sam was blinking and rubbing his eyes and thanking Cas. 

It was not enough. But it had to be enough. For now.

Cas was somewhere in there, waiting to be found. 

They weren’t giving up on him. Not again. 

Dean grunted, swallowing down the emotion, so he could focus. “Yeah, yeah, hug it out later, guys. Got research to do, remember?” And Dean marched off, and then had to stop as he remembered Cas wouldn’t know to come with them on his own. 

But apparently he did. He stopped short of colliding with Dean, not backing up an inch. Personal-space ignorant, once more. 

Definitely something of the old Cas in there. Just waiting to be found. 

Dean fought a smile, wiping at his mouth. Wiping harder when he saw Sam's smirk. “Come on then. Daylight’s burning." He clapped this hands together. "Let’s get to work.”


	4. Chapter 4

Yeah, research? That didn’t last long. To go from kneeling with an invisible hand shoved down your throat to . . . this, whatever it was . . . to diving into research? Even Sam and Dean needed a breather between disasters. 

Dean realized that the minute he opened a book that still smelled of gas all these months later, its pages all weepy from damage. 

The laptop was no better at keeping him on task.

The world had gone to hell, and they were responsible, once again, and they were never more alone when dealing with it. But this time, it was a genie they couldn’t put back in the bottle. Riots, panic, martial law in places—stupid people, doing stupid things. And Jack’s face and so many others, including theirs truly, were plastered across the Internet and TV, non-stop. 

“There’s not enough beer for this.” Dean slammed shut the laptop lid, looked at his phone and the lack of messages, and stomped into the kitchen. There he found three last bottles. “Literally.”

He brought them back from the kitchen, nudging his brother’s shoulder with one. 

“That bad, huh?” Sam didn’t look up from his book as he accepted the offering, though he had to prop his head up with one hand. “Thanks.”

“I think we can chuck the fake IDs, unless we can find a way to wipe the last week from every hard drive, TiVo, and noggin.” Dean sat back down and reopened the computer, trying not to go beyond the bookmarked Enochian search results, but unable to help himself looking for the last images of the last people alive who cared for them and they cared about. Claire and Jody and Alex. Various snippets: stills of them smiling, from time far removed from the present; clips from moments of panic as they dived into their car and took off.

He slammed back down the lid, pushing the computer away from him. Through with it. Through with all of it. But still . . . “Have you heard from . . . Jack didn’t gloat about Jody and the girls, so maybe the protective spell held?” Dean drowned half his beer in one go, wanting, not wanting to hear the response. His fingers played with the catch on the laptop lid.

Sam stopped propping up his chin and looked at his phone. “No, but it’s not supposed to lift till midnight.” Meaning Jody and the girls didn’t know crap about the world, caught in bubble better than Bubble Boy’s, until then. “We’ll know more then.” But Sam didn’t immediately return to his book of smeared gobbledygook either, staring at his phone a long moment before setting on the table, in sight. “It’s a good sign, Dean. If they contact us before, that means Lily’s spell didn’t hold.” 

Try saying that without a beer chaser, and I might believe you. Right now it wasn't just their energies that needed propping up, but their hopes.

Dean quit playing with the laptop lid and took another drink of his own liquid courage. There was only one of their party who wasn’t joining in.

The one staring at him. 

Dean opened the untouched third beer and pushed it closer to Cas. “Come on. You've earned it.”

Silver-ringed blue eyes dropped to the bottle. 

And stared.

“Do you think he’s . . . “ Sam licked his lips. He took another long sip. “He should be reading our minds better than this, you know. Do you think some wires are crossed?” 

“He’s fine,” Dean snarled. “He’s probably just not eavesdropping or knowing that he should ignore the keep out signs for once.” He picked up the waiting beer. Swallowed some down, it tasting more bitter than normal, or maybe that was just his mood. He picked up Cas’s hand and folded his fingers around it. “Drink.”

“I don’t think he remembers that, the old rules. Like personal space. Like . . . ” Another sip. "Chairs."

 _It had taken five minutes of pantomiming to get that one to sink. Cas had just cocked his head and said something none of them understood, not even deigning to repeat during the increasingly stupid demonstrations._

_“Where is Google Translate when you need it,” Dean had muttered at last, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Here. Sit.” And he whistled and patted the chair. As if his friend were some dog. Then winced and started back, the memory of Jack’s words like an icepick in the skull. “Or stand. Whatever.” Sam gave him a weird look. “I don’t care.” His tongue began itching for a beer then._

But he had held off for an hour. Only because after a moment of both of them sitting, Cas had sat down on his own.

In the chosen chair.

Pain spike through his head at the memory now, but Dean gritted through it. “He will remember. He just needs a little time to catch up.” Dean pushed the mouth of the beer bottle to Cas’s lips, and--"Hah! See!"--Cas caught on: He lowered his mouth, eyes never leaving Dean’s, and sipped. Then he blinked for the first time in about an hour. He looked down at the bottle, nose wrinkling, and set the beer back on the table, pushing it back toward Dean, muttering some Enochian that needed no translation.

Sam chuckled. “Well, some things haven’t changed. Must still taste like molecules to him.”

Dean swiped the bottle and drank most of it one go. “Molecules like these shouldn’t go to waste.” 

He finished Cas’s, before downing his own.

Sam protested with a, “Hey, Dean, take it easy.”

“You read my mind.” Dean stood, his chair scooting gratingly across the ground, making his headache worse. “I’m calling it for a few. You want the first shift?”

It took a moment, but the lightbulb flickered on above Sam’s head. His eyes darted to Cas, whom Dean was purposefully not looking at, at the moment. In the past, their friend would make a stink face and grumble about not needing a babysitter because he was old as dirt and capable of rendering them all back to it or something. 

But there was nothing of that from that sector. Just silence at his elbow. And the feeling of relentless staring. Wrongness that he wasn’t going to poke at too hard, not if he wanted a few winks. And God, he needed a few. More than a few. A month's worth at least, to catch up on all he had missed out on lately.

And who knows, maybe when he did, Cas would be ready to grumble at them after all.

Or maybe he'd have the energy to hit the books till they coughed up what they needed.

Or Lily did.

Sam may have counted her out, but he hadn’t. They needed her too much.

Sam ducked his head down and hastily flipped through the pages of his research too fast to actually be reading anything. His other hand smoothed the already smooth as it would get page from Lily's notebook. “Is that necessary, you think? Babysitting duty?”

“You were at the same shadow puppet show I was at." A room full of twitching, fluffed out, black feathers that were not quite here, but were definitely not ragged scars on gravel in a godforsaken part of the States. A place he didn't mind Jack wiping off the face off earth, that cabin. "His wings are back, and he’s a flight risk until we can figure out how we can turn the bunker into an angel-sized invisible fence.”

The page flipping stopped, and Sam nodded and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. All right. Four hours?”

Dean wrapped his knuckles on the desk in goodnight and backed away from the table. “Four hours.”

And he trudged out of the room, into the hallway, and ran smack dab into the flapping sound that resolved into a trenchcoated form.

Sam pounded into the hallway a moment later, panting. Then stopped short at the sight. “I guess, I guess he’s going with you then?”

“Whatever." God, he was too tired for this. "No more flapping. Legs, use ‘em.” And he snagged the sleeve of the trench coat and dragged Cas down the hallway.

A certain doorway always filled him with a dull pain in his gut. It hadn’t been opened since Cas had hightailed it with Satan Jr in utero. It didn’t need to be opened now. 

Instead, Dean led him to his room and gestured at the chair not far from the bed, fighting back a yawn. “Just because you flunked the last few years of Basic Human 101, that doesn’t mean you are lurking in the dark or perching on the end of my bed. Sit. Do you remember ‘sit?’” 

The icepick headache stabbed twice as hard, as he remembered Jack's words, as he remembered Sam's. _“He should be reading our minds better than this, you know. Do you think some wires are crossed?”_

But he shouldn’t have worried.

There was no hesitation. Cas sat.

Not totaled. Just in need of tune up—and who wasn’t after these last few months, hell, years. 

And if Cas followed Dean with his eyes, while Dean changed into sweats and t-shirt, as Dean got into bed, as he pulled up the covers, as he turned off the lamp, then that was fine. It was fixable. 

Until he rolled onto his back, closed his eyes, and realized he couldn't hear Cas breathe. He wouldn't be able to know if he were gone or not. He sat back up and flipped on the light. But that wouldn't be enough, either. The minute he nodded off, Cas could be halfway around the world.

Getting torn apart by nutjobs.

Or whatever hunters and Men of Letters might be remaining.

Unable to return home.

Unable to be tracked down. 

Lost.

But God . . . he scrubbed his face, trying to wipe away the images of a world gone mad, going madder still, of an empty room down the hall staying permanently empty. But God, though, he was so tired. 

He’d never live it down if Sam ever heard or saw it, but he got up, ripped out the belt from the loops on the Dead Guy’s Robe, and tied one end around Cas’s wrist. Then with some grunting, he pulled at the chair. No go. Got behind it and dug in his shoulder. Nada. He stood. Pulled at Cas's arm, and five minute later, Cas got the hint and stood. Dean moved the chair till there was just legroom between it and the bed, and patted it again. Before he could say a word, Cas was sitting, and Dean wasn't feeling so bad any more about tying off the other end of the Cas-tether to his own wrist.

There. He flopped back down on the bed and moved his wrist until it the line was taut. Cas would have to get up—or flap off—if he wanted to leave, and Dean would feel it and wake up and stop him. Everything was good, getting better by the minute.

Such hopes dulled his headache and chased him into a dreamless sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I get turned around in a workplace I've been employed at for five years, so that is my excuse for poor bunker geography. Please forgive.

When Dean woke, it was in raw panic at the slack on his wrist, and his mind filled with images of blood and death and burnt wing shadows on the ground. 

But the moment he sat up, his wrist jerked. 

Cas was still there. 

Cas had not moved an inch.

Probably hadn’t blinked those silver-ringed eyes once. Stupid, Dean. Stupid.

Dean had moved, though. He had rolled over in his sleep, and the tie went slack, and it was his own damn fault.

I need to get a leash. He didn’t care how that sounded; it was going down on the list, along with a month’s worth of beer. If they were going to risk going out and getting shivved in an alley or thrown in the slammer, he was going to make it worth the trip. 

To cover while his heart settled down, Dean reached out and ruffled his friend’s black hair with his free hand. “Creep.”

Cas blinked. Then reached out and threaded his fingers through Dean’s mop and lifted his hand slowly away. Dean laughed and brushed his hair back down. “Close.”

He untied them, got up and stretched, popping his spine. His watch said three hours had passed. A little over three more hours away from midnight and closure. One more hour before he kicked Sam out of the library. He looked at his dresser and knew just what to do with it. 

 

* * *

The trailing thing was okay, up to a point, and that point being the threshold of the bathroom. He put a hand on Cas’s chest and backed him up a few steps until he was safe and sound in the hallway. “No.” Dean repeated it in Enochian. > **“No.”** Then: “Wait here. Right here.” 

Maybe he should get Sam. 

No. Cas had kept his butt glued to the chair during the last three hours while he watched paint peel or his cells decay. It was good.

It had better be. 

“You had better be right here”—he thrust a finger at the floor—“when I get back out, got it, Cas?”

Cas muttered something in Enochian too long to be a yes, but Dean let it slide and shut the door. Before his hand left the handle, the thought crept back in like a roach that wouldn’t die: Maybe I should get Sam.

Maybe I should master the fine art of the three-minute bathroom run.

Yeah, that.

* * *

His clothes were still sticking to his damp back and legs when he ripped open the door, struggling to shrug on his flannel. “Cas, I—“

Cas wasn’t there. 

Dean dropped the top, his heart going from zero to 60 in a second. “Cas? Cas?” Under his breath he muttered, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Louder, “I’m sorry. It’s all right. You can follow me around wherever you want. Okay? Cas?”

No return.

No response.

Just an empty hall.

Dean ran.

* * * 

Sam was drooping over a book on what appeared to be anatomy lesson of angel feathers, one of the few titles on Lily’s list that didn’t require a translation. The artwork on the bloated pages blurred, and not all from gasoline damage, and so was his knowledge of what this page was about, though he knew he had gone over it a dozen times. It was getting to the point no amount of rubbing of his eyes or getting up and stretching his legs was helping. Then he heard it. Dean’s panicked shout. 

He snapped upright in his seat.

There it was again. Cas’s name. Shit.

He dropped what he was doing, the book thudding off the table onto the floor, scattering a handful of papers with it, and he ran and met Dean in the hallway. 

Dean grabbed his arm as Sam skidded to a stop. “Is he with you? Tell me he’s with you.”

Sam barely got out half a shake of his head before Dean was tearing off again, shouting for their missing friend, his voice getting rougher and louder with each repetition. 

Sam had to shout himself to be heard over him. “How did you lose him?" He thought they'd need a crowbar to pry him off Dean's shadow. "Did he fly away?”

Having lived with his brother all his life, Sam knew his guilty look: a mixture of anger and avoidance, a mixture of clenching fists and fidgets and askance looks. “Do I look like I’m his keeper? You know, forget the damn invisible fence. I’m getting him microchipped.” He stopped short in the kitchen. “His phone. Did we burn . . . did we keep his phone?” Dean patted himself down. “Where’s your phone? Mine’s in my room.”

“Mine’s closer.” Sam trotted back to the library, Dean close on his heels, and he snatched up his smartphone and started dialing. 

No tell-tale ring sounded off in the bunker.

Sam pulled open the laptop and started tapping away while Dean did his part, getting on his nerves, muttering, “Come on, come on, hurry up.”

Nothing. GPS came up with nothing. Shit. 

Sam sat back, tapping his fingers on the scattered notes on the desk, trying to keep his voice calmer than he felt. “We need to look through the bunker. He wouldn’t have gone far from your side.”

“What does that mean?”

Sam just quirked an eyebrow at the sharp, defensive tone, which made his brother stammer.

“It’s—it’s not like that. We’re not like that. Shut up.”

“I know, but you’re the one he’s sticking close to.” Sam licked his lips. “Probably because he can sense the, uh, mark he left on your arm still when he pulled you from Hell." Something he only gave to you. "Did he ever . . . ?”

“Did he ever what?”

Touch it. Connect with you through it. But the jerk face he was giving Sam told him it wasn’t time to bring up their "profound bond." Actually never was the time to bring up that, in Dean’s book. 

“Nothing.”

“Whatever.” Dean’s face pinched up and left off his nervous hovering to dart for the door. “Stop wasting time yapping about our relationship. Let’s go. We have an angel to find and chain to a damn chair.”

If only it would be that easy. Sam took a moment when the room was empty to send a prayer to Cas. After all, if their friend wasn’t impersonating an imprinted duckling, then he wasn’t in the bunker. Period.

So he was going to be hard to find.

And that wasn’t going to end well. Sam looked as the scattered papers carpeting on the floor, yet another race against time. How could his brother lose him? They needed something to go there way. They didn't have time for this.

Sam scrubbed the tiredness and frustration from his face. Then prayed again, dropping a few Enochian words in for good measure. Though Chuck knew, Dean had already tried--was probably filling up the line so his own couldn't get through. Dammit, Cas.

Prayers and curses alike turned up nothing.

Not a single flap or flutter. 

And the only head poking around the corner was Dean. “You coming or what?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll take the bedrooms. You want the garage? Meet back . . . ” And Dean was gone again. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Sam closed his eyes and muttered the ceiling, “Please, Cas.” Just “please.” And he started on his part of this act of futility, but it was better than nothing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slowness in getting this up. Got hit with the stomach bug on top of a lot of work things.

But Cas was not in the bunker. Every room, every possible place, even the grounds outside, and under the beds and in the closets—they all turned up squat. And Sam hadn’t heard the bunker door squeal open and close, which meant Cas had snuck out, by wing. That meant he could be anywhere.

And who knew what Lily had really said to Sam, who shy on sharing details. What if she had said Cas wasn't fully back? What if Cas was weak? He just got back his wings; what if they had cut out mid-way, and he had plummeted to the ground. What if he was hurt, stuck in the middle of nowhere, and didn’t know the way back? 

What if he were already dead? Dean sat on the edge of Cas’s bed, which hadn’t been his bed for months, and clutching the back of his neck.

His brother hovered in the doorway a long while before finally clearing his throat and saying:

“Dean.”

“No.” Dean got up and marched out, not stopping until he got to the supply closet outside the dungeon. He ripped open the cabinets, stalked into the dungeon with his loot, and slammed the summoning bowl on the table. He began to cobble together a spell he could put together blindfolded. 

It took Sam a little, but he got it, for he said, “Dean, you’re not going to summon him?”

Dean tossed the dried angelica in with more force than necessary. “You have a better idea?” The parts that had missed the bowl were scraped off the table with a knife into his hand and stuffed back where they belonged. “Because I don’t. I’ve tried praying; I’ve been praying nonstop, but I don’t think he can . . . “ He shook his head.

“What if it . . . pisses him off like it usually does?”

Dean rested his hands on the table, head lowered.

That was not what Sam was asking. Not the only thing. 

Ever since Cas had lost his wings, Dean had worried about the effects of summoning and sending him back to the cornfield. His doubts were amplified because of what that prick Ishim said to stop him in the church. 

_“You blast me away, you'll blast away every angel in the room. I'll survive. Castiel, on the other hand, he's hurt. He might live or he might just end up a bloody smear on the wall. Roll the dice.”_

But Cas had his wings back. He didn’t seem weak, just . . . 

_“Roll the dice.”_

He had to this time. 

No other choice.

“I’ll take that chance.”

After a moment, Sam moved to his side and pitched in, starting to chalk the lines of the Enochian sigil on floor. “But maybe you should be the one to call him. He answers to you, uh, better.”

Dean just grunted and finished placing the focus beside the summoning bowl. It worked best when it was something of their target. In this case, it was the mix tape he had rescued from the truck. Sam, fortunately, didn’t say a word.

Dean lit the match. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

And he dropped the match in the bowl.

Since it didn’t matter what he said, more what he tried to hammer away with in his thoughts, Dean muttered to the ceiling, “Red rover, red rover, send Cas—Castiel—right over.”

“Seriously, Dean?”

But it didn’t disappoint. 

There was a sound they hadn’t heard in years, a flap like bedsheets in the wind, but different, like an elephant’s trumpet was far from T-Rex’s roar, but it was in there, somewhere. They couldn’t make sound effects to handle an angel, however. 

Not this one, anyway.

Cas was standing before them. Flustered looking. Hair disarrayed. Brow knit. Hands grey with ash.

Dean had told himself he would be calm when Cas arrived. Treat him with kid’s gloves. The less likely to be smited then. Or smoked to a crisp, fragrant wisp. Less likely to send him off again in a huff. 

But what came out was: 

“I told you stay.” 

“Dean.”

Dean glanced at Sam over his shoulder. “How do you say ‘stay’ in Enochian.” 

“Uhm . . . oh.” And Sam grumbled something out. 

Dean grumbled it back at Cas. “Stay. **Stay.** Or we are going to salt your tail feathers and clip your wings.”

It took a moment, but a mulish look spread across Cas’s features, making Sam and Dean take a step back. But their friend didn’t pursue. Didn’t fill the air with wings and ungodly pressure, squishing them flat as bugs. 

Instead his brow lightened, and he said, in Enochian, **“No.”**

“Dammit.” Dean stomped up into his space. “Yes.” He repeated that in Enochian. “You are staying put. You have to stay. You can’t just . . . “ He clenched his fists. “Cas, you can’t just take off anymore. It’s not . . . it’s not safe.”

Cas cocked his head. Then he put his ash-covered hands on Dean’s chest and pushed back gently. Suddenly mindful of personal space? “What?”

“No,” Cas said, this time in English. **“No,”** in Enochian. And he repeated the gesture.

Oh. Oh! Dean got it. “Oh, crap, when we were in the bathroom together.”

“Uhm?” Sam scrubbed the back of his neck and stepped into view. “Congrats? I think I’m going to head back to the library.”

“Shut up. It’s not like that. God, how we are ever going to . . . “

Without warning, Cas’s wings unfurled behind him, startling Sam back, drawing in Dean, who ran his fingers down them like piano keys. Not that he knew what that was like. They didn’t play music. And this was no piano. They twitched and shivered and felt like, smelled like, _tasted_ like tingling layers of sun. And pictures. Pictures like reflections in mirrors filled each feather.  
The feathers shifted with a sheen. Now even Sam moved in close.

But it was Dean Cas was “talking” to. 

Chasing Dean’s touch, images flickered in and out:

_Relaying the event outside the bathroom, of Dean wanting Cas to stay away, of Cas flying away to the field where the showdown had gone down. Everything burnt and black, flat and wobbly looking . . . Worse, according to Cas’s perspective: the death of his kind flickered in and out like ghosts, and as they did so, the world tilted, and colors streaked and changed, all in a way that made Dean glad he had skipped breakfast. It was impossible to know how long Cas stood there . . . And the focus changed to Cas, Cas cupping shrieking earth, Cas looking up as some people in FBI uniform looked at him. Recognized him. Pointed guns at him. Shouted at him._

_In their imagination, the bullets were flying, hitting him, hurting him, restoring order to the world._

_In reality, Cas brushed them off as if they were nothing._

_He stood._

_He spoke to them, and then he felt something tear at his wings, thunder over him, and he was . . ._

__Here.

With them.

While Cas went on repeat, over several feathers, focusing on different moments, at the same time, Dean shook himself. Looked down at his own chest, at the shirt smudged with ash. Cas’s own hands were still stained.

Chosen to stay stained.

Not so the bullet holes. Or the blood.

“He was mourning,” Sam said. He flapped his hands. “You were mourning your brothers and sisters?” He grumbled a word in Enchain, which was repeated back with a cock of the head and lift of the grimy palms. “Mourning.”

Yeah, Dean could see that, even see the reasoning behind that, though it wasn’t a good idea at the moment—or next decade. The bullets holes—that no longer existed—were evidence of that. Or had been evidence of that. 

“All right. Fine, that’s fine.” Though it was not. Really not. What if Cas had been depowered? What if the bullets had hurt? What if a remnant of hunters of MOL had equipped them with something that could hurt. Like angel-blade bullets. To risk his life all over some stupid . . . Dean took the corner of his shirt and swiped at the hands until they were . . . cleaner. Cas didn’t want them clean, so they weren’t turning up that way. “Fine. Next time take us with you.” Or not at all.

Once Cas’s brow unscrunched, Dean and Sam tried again. With more careful thinking. More sympathetic words. Focusing on their concern for Cas. 

According to the feather-play, that translated into the brothers standing at the death grounds with him, all three dressed in black, all three burning things hunter style. 

So, Cas didn’t quite understand.

“It’s a start,” Dean said, rapping his knuckles against the splay of image. It resounded against the walls like a thump against a brick wall. He rolled a finger in the ear. And not just against the walls; inside his head too. The wings had twitched before the first echo, seeming to make themselves smaller. “Close, Cas, but you get the idea. We go with you, or you go not at all.” 

A couple repetitions drove that point home. Dean and Sam walking, anywhere, driving anywhere, doing anything, and Cas trailing behind always.

During some point in this interchange, Sam had retreated from the feather-play and was picking up the spent summoning tools. Finished, he handed Dean back the mix tape without a word. 

Dean tucked it away nonchalantly in a pocket. A gesture undermined when several feathers repeated that action back to him—and the last time it had exchanged hands—and the first time. A few notes from the start of each track began to play. Not from his pocket, but a feather here and there. 

“That’s . . . useful.”

Arms full of supplies, Sam headed for the door. “It’s not going to replace research, Dean. We need to be able to talk. With words.”

Dean sighed. “I know.” He flicked a feather, and it rang like a tuning fork. Or what he thought one sounded like. Cool. 

Or not cool. The music cut off, and wings fluffed and drew behind Cas’s back, safely out of reach. So, Dean had to be more careful. The feathers were wavelengths of light and intent, after all. Wavelengths sounded . . . delicate, easily disrupted, incapable of staying put.

“Are you coming?”

“Yeah.” Dean shook himself. Looked at Cas, who was looking at him. “Yeah, we are.” And Dean snagged a sleeve and guided Cas after him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from an odd series of connections. One of my favorite poems is Yeats's "The Second Coming." While trying to cobble together something from that poem to fit the mood of this piece, I came across this link explaining the poem: http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/yeats/yeats5.html. The author of the page had written that he had made a mistake, but his mistake was interesting. "Ars moriendi" means the "art of dying well," and who better did that fit than Cas, the Picasso of death.


End file.
